The mythology is pretty creative, and the decision to present the entire thing as a geologist's report is at least interesting, but it's really not enough to overcome the fact that this is a horror story in which nothing particularly scary happens. It's trying to build a sense of foreboding by describing things from a distance and acting like the protagonist might encounter living monsters, but it ruins that by (a) telling you that he only came to psychological harm in the opening paragraphs and (b) resorting to comical overuse of a handful of "scary" adjectives to convey that you're supposed to be scared.

Anybody know if all of Agatha Christie's books share a connected universe or are they self-contained stories? From what I've seen it seems at least some are connected to some degree (sharing characters or whatever), so knowing which are connected and how would be cool.

So I bought the manga 'Don't Meddle With My Daughter!' v1 based on its Amazon buzz, because I like a fun deconstruction of superhero stuff. Like, I thought it'd maybe be something like 'Empowered', or 'The Incredibles', here. Certainly wasn't expecting straight-up hentai.

I mean, it isn't a deal-breaker. I'm no prude. But it does make me think twice about buying v2. Hentai just isn't really my bag, man.

I mean...I guess it came shrink-wrapped. Should have been a red flag. I don't know.

(EDIT:...don't gotta worry about these sordid shenanigans in 'Girl Genius'. Bad guys in 'Girl Genius' comport themselves like gentlemen, dangit. The Wulffenbachs and their guys are gentlemen. Othar Tryggvassen is a gentleman. Hell, even the Jaegers are gentlemen, and they're a race of orc-like fanged tusked humanoid monsters who eat bugs and worms. They like and protect Agatha specifically because they're genetically engineered to think her family 'smellz verra nize', and even they manage not to be too gross about it.)

Last edited by Booyakasha on Thu Feb 22, 2018 12:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Read Comics for Choice, a collection of short stories about abortion, most of them based on personal experiences. This was from a Kickstarter campaign I participated in. There are a lot of different authors/artists involved, and it's very illuminating.

Read Doc Bizarre M.D. by Joe Casey and Andy Suriano. It's about the attempts of the titular doctor (not to be confused with Dr. Strange or Dr. Weird) to provide medical care for the supernatural. It was alright; I didn't love it and I didn't hate it.

So I read this book, 'How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History', by Erik Durschmied. It's basically an analysis of some dozen-odd military operations throughout history, ranging from Troy to Desert Storm, like, really getting down into the nitty-gritty, the kitchen details, right. Really well-researched and all. The overall theme is what Durschmied dubs 'the hinge factor'------------essentially, the one huge mistake or unbelievable stroke of luck that turned the tide of battle. Some chapters are more fun than others (needless to say, reading about the Battle of Tannenberg was kind of miserable), but as a whole the book was pretty dang good.

Finished Watchmen yesterday. This was another example of where I'm partially familiar with a work through osmosis, but when I finally get around to reading it it's almost nothing like what I imagined it would be. I liked it a lot; it was an interesting deconstruction of superhero fiction, and raised some perturbing moral questions. I wasn't a huge fan of the exposition-filled supplements at the end of each chapter though. They had some interesting tidbits but for the most part broke up the pace too much.